Websites are born free but everywhere they are in chains
What would Jean-Jacques Rousseau have thought of blockchain, the Fediverse?
"Bitcoin will win because there is now competition in money, and bitcoin is the best money currently available because it is decentralized and it cannot be stopped." - Erik Voorhees
Let's set aside the debate about Bitcoin's ability to function as money in society for a moment (spoiler: it can't). Instead, I'd like to delve into the concept of decentralization and its implications in the longstanding discussion about freedom.
Blockchain technology, also known as distributed ledger technology, is often hailed for its decentralized nature by its staunch advocates. For instance, above is a quote by Erik Voorhees, a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency community, who is known for his enthusiastic support of Bitcoin, which was the first application of blockchain technology.
However, this portrayal of blockchain, whether in reference to digital currencies or other claimed applications in web3, often muddles the distinction between being distributed and truly decentralized. Federated platforms like Mastodon vividly demonstrate this difference.
Federated services or websites operate independently but use shared protocols, enabling them to interact and exchange content seamlessly. In contrast blockchains are networks comprising nodes, each adhering to common communication protocols, and even share code and databases. A service does not merely use this network; it runs on top of it and is part of it, it’s a platform.
Before diving deeper into this subject, it's crucial to clarify what we mean by centralization and decentralization. These concepts boast a rich and distinguished history. The essence of decentralization is the freedom to act as one wishes. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's views on politics and freedom capture this notion perfectly, as exemplified in his famous quote:
“Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.”
This newsletter draws its name from Thomas Hobbes’s work, "Leviathan." Hobbes viewed the state of nature as perilous, proposing the state, or Leviathan, in which power would be centralized, as the solution. In stark contrast, Rousseau believed that humans were inherently free in nature, and it was society that imposed restrictions on us.
While Hobbes thought conflict inevitable, Rousseau believed it was easily avoided in the state of nature because we could just get out of the way of anybody who endangered us. We could find peace in solitude, in being unconnected nodes. Creating a society was the original sin. In network speak, for Rousseau, edges are chains, and society was full of them.
Node to Everywhere
But back to the tech. If freedom is our goal, Mastodon's is a purer form of decentralisation than blockchain. Even when decentralisation is a good idea, it's not apparent that a blockchain network achieves freedom in Rousseau’s sense of the word.
By definition, you are building on top of a network connected to other things. You are a node in a system. That connectivity is not a downside, it is the attraction in finance and other use cases. Money tends to be recognised as such if it can be used everywhere within a community to facilitate transactions (the so-called singleness of money1). This is why stablecoins, pegged to a single fiat currency, are a thing.
Yet most blockchains operate in isolation, hindering their expansive potential and fragmenting the landscape, and so confounding the singleness of money2. Efforts to connect these disparate networks are not only complex and pricey but introduce risk and also result in a subpar user experience3.
Blockchain networks tend to market concentration
This is why blockchain networks tend to market concentration; there’s an inherent winner-takes-all dynamic4. The result is that Stablecoins are (sensibly) developed on the blockchain networks where they intend to be used— the ones with the most scale.
So inherent in the promise of blockchain or DLT is the idea of the ubiquity of the network itself. This, however, presents governance coordination issues and much besides. A benevolent dictator might run your blockchain, or it may have some voting mechanism. But it’s not the rugged individualism that Rousseau had in mind.
It's also notable, for example, that critical data built on top of these networks are often left outside of these distributed systems for security and privacy reasons. See the ID data of Sam Altman's Worldcoin, for example.
When I compared blockchain networks to the Fediverse on Threads, I got some pushback:
“Uh... no? Peer-to-peer (blockchain networks) is definitely more decentralized. A federated service basically has a handful of nodes run by people who use an open source standard to run a server, and each of those nodes communicate with each other based on rules that each server approves of.
A P2P network makes each user a node. The entire thing feels more unified because you access a single resource that just pings off of many nodes instead of one federated server, but feeling more unified ≠ centralized.”
Mastodon would have been Rousseau's choice
To which I answered.
The difference is that I can decide to run a federated site on my own server, disable communication with the rest of the federation, and continue to function. I can rewrite my whole Mastodon site and don’t need permission from anyone to do so. With DLT, that's not possible because it's unified; by definition, you are part of something - a node.
To be sure, on a blockchain network, you can build part of your service so it runs outside of the network, but the bits that are a part of the network are a part of something bigger.
Either way, with blockchain or federated, the only way to gain full control is to sever ties, Rousseau would have said. And with a federated site that is easier to do5. Viewed this way, the Metaverse, with the intention of interconnecting online worlds and being only one thing, is a nightmare vision for Reasseau.
We are Cyborgs
You may say, but that is a ridiculous argument. We can not avoid interacting and even sharing with other people, servers or services when online. Even if you decide to noindex your website, so search engines know not to crawl and index it even if you don’t register a domain name for it. You still run on other’s physical networks. And rogue crawlers will find you. Your site and server’s software will soon be prone to security breaches if you don’t update it.
So, if Rousseau was ever right offline, and I don't think he was, he certainly is not correct online. We can’t avoid being connected to the whole online, but even offline, we can’t avoid society (or its messy politics), however much we’d like to.
Which is partly why I choose Hobbes’s Leviathan over Rousseau for this newsletter — and why I am a fan of Donna Haraway. Haroway wrote in her Cyborg Manifesto:
It is not an exhaustive description but it is a non-optional constitution of objects, of knowledge in operation. It is not about having an implant, it is not about liking it. This is not some kind of blissed-out technobunny joy in information. It is a statement that we had better get it – this is a worlding operation. Never the only worlding operation going on, but one that we had better inhabit as more than a victim. We had better get it that domination is not the only thing going on here. We had better get it that this is a zone where we had better be the movers and the shakers, or we will be just victims.
While this writing is a little too obtuse for my liking, it perfectly captures my thinking. Haraway says we can not escape technology (a non-optional constitution). Technology is not the only thing going on (Never the only worlding operation going on), but it’s an important place where power operates. While we can not avoid technology, we can shape it through politics (We had better get it that this is a zone where we had better be the movers and the shakers, or we will be just victims). And we better get stuck in.
The "singleness of money" refers to the idea that in any given economy, there is typically one dominant form of money that is universally accepted in exchange for goods and services that provide a consistent and reliable unit of account.
API’s and other techniques can be used to link networks but with trade-offs in terms of settlement time, complexity, security and risk.
Ethereum’s total value locked in is more than 40 times that of other programable blockchain networks put together.
Trump’s Truth Social is built on Mastodon, but with the communications functions disabled.